SDCC 08: Ben 10 Alien Force Hands-on

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We activate the Omnitirx.

By Jack DeVries

Unlike E3, Comic-Con has a whole ton of kids all over the place. I can feel them running around by my feet like sticky-fingered mice. All those younglings also means that there is a line to play the new Ben 10: Alien Force game on the Nintendo DS. After wiping down the demo station with a moist towlette, I was ready to kick some butt.

The demo at the show was a run through of the first level and boss fight. In the demo Ben only had two aliens in his Omnitrix: Echo Echo and Humongosaur. We don't know if this is normal for the first episode and players gain more of the aliens later, or if the demo just only featured two. There were definitely parts of the level that looked like they needed to be accessed by a creature that could jump far higher than either of the two we had.

The game is a pretty basic side scrolling beat-em-up with a healthy dash of platforming elements. Various generic enemies dropped from the top of the screen as we ran through a shipyard of some sort.

The game obviously differs depending on the alien chosen. Both of them were effective enough against enemies, but they had completely different move sets. Humongosaur was slow, but immensely strong, and dispatched most enemies with one hit. Echo Echo was more of a fast, ranged character. Packs less of a punch, but can hit enemies with his sound attacks from across the screen.

Both characters have multiple combos that result in some fairly neat and very fluid animations. Humongosaur growing larger to land a heavy punch looked pretty hard core.

The demo was really short, but we got to see one of the boss battles. We had to beat down a huge robotic guy until his shell broke, then we could attack him directly. Not too complex, but it was the first boss after all, and this is a game for kids.

We'll have more news on Ben 10: Alien Force, and which aliens make the cut for the game, when the game gets closer to release.